


Only Impossible Until It's Not

by Musetotheworld



Series: Tumblr Prompt Fills [16]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, alternate realities are fun for the whole family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-10-01 23:42:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10203503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Musetotheworld/pseuds/Musetotheworld
Summary: Sometimes the weight of one reality is too much to bear. Thankfully, Kara has a little device that lets her find another for a few hours. But when you travel between worlds, sometimes you find more than you expected.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Kara travels to a new Earth and meets the second incarnation of Supergirl, who is also Kara and Cat's daughter. This experience inspires her to reveal her feelings to Cat.

Kara knows it’s probably dangerous, but when she was overwhelmed by the weight of responsibilities and expectations of her Earth, she’d bring out Cisco’s device and hop worlds for a few hours. At first she just checked in with Barry on Earth-1, but eventually that got to be no better. When she’d show up there, she’d end up helping with whatever mess he’d gotten into lately.

And it’s not that she didn’t like helping, Barry was a friend and a good man, and Kara was always glad to help out. But he didn’t usually  _ need  _ the help, and it seemed to turn into trading one set of responsibilities for another. Not exactly the restful escape she’d been thinking of.

So after a while, she starts visiting other worlds instead. She gets a list of ‘definitely avoid’ Earths from Cisco in exchange for a signed photo of her pod, and off she goes. And it’s always interesting, seeing where she pops up and what’s happening on all these different Earths. So many things are different each time, but it’s fun seeing what’s the same as well.

Like when she steps out onto Earth-50 for the first time and sees the CatCo tower in the distance, just as bright as it is on her Earth. It wasn’t always there, or at least didn’t always bear the distinctive logo, but most of the time it was a familiar sight on unfamiliar worlds. 

Kara is just about to head into the city from where she’d appeared a safe distance from the outskirts when a rushing noise overhead gets her attention. Apparently there are aliens on this planet, possibly even another version of herself. It wouldn’t be the first time, and Kara steels herself against another pang of hurt that always seems to come after meeting herself and sharing the loss of Krypton with someone who understands.

Except this time it isn’t another version of herself standing there, though Kara can see a resemblance. And more than that, this woman has the House of El crest emblazoned across her chest, marking her instantly as family. The suit reminds Kara of Astra’s uniform, the uniform of Krypton’s military guild, but it’s softer somehow, not as severe. More like Kal-El’s than Astra’s, especially with the cape flowing from her shoulders. It looks nice, and Kara is tempted to copy it for herself when she gets home.

Kara’s own suit isn’t visible, she’d learned the hard way that it just made her stand out when blending in was the far better option. So there’s no matching recognition in this woman’s eyes, no instant camaraderie like Kara feels surging through her at the thought that maybe someone else had survived on this world.

_ “Iieu?” _

Kara is sure she'd misheard at first, that after so many years only rarely speaking Kryptonian she’d somehow forgotten it completely. But no, she remembers that word completely, whispers it every night as she begs Rao to look over her parents. Over her  _ mother. _

_ “What?” _ Kara asks in shock, because this girl is her age, maybe a little younger. It can’t be her daughter, can it? How would that even be possible?

_ “Ieiu, what happened? Why do you look so young?” _ the questions come quickly, and Kara struggles to keep up. A child, a daughter, someone who carries on a tradition from light years away. It’s everything Kara hadn’t known she wanted so badly, everything she’d never thought possible.

_ “I’m from another Earth, not this one. I’m not actually your ieiu,” _ Kara admits, knowing she needs to correct that assumption before anything else.  _ “Who are you?”  _ A look of surprise crosses the woman’s face, and rather than answering she pulls out a phone to type out a message, probably to whatever version of Kara lives on this Earth.

Sure enough barely twenty seconds of silence pass before there’s another rushing noise, and now Kara is face to face with another version of herself in an outfit similar to the one the younger woman is wearing. Except this time she’s visibly older, aged in a way that Kara hasn’t seen from any other version of herself, even the ones who hadn’t spend decades in the Phantom Zone. She looks to be in her mid-thirties, where every other version of herself Kara has met still looks twenty-five. And that’s as much of a shock as anything else Kara has seen on this Earth so far.

“Who are you?” the older version of herself asks, speaking English rather than the Kryptonian Kara longs to hear. It’s been so long since she’s had a proper conversation in her native language.

“My name is Kara Zor-El, I’m from another version of Earth,” Kara says, standing straighter and speaking with all the weight of the name she carries. It might only be another version of herself standing there, but she still reacts to an older Kryptonian in a position of power with instinctive respect.  _ “I mean you no harm,” _ she promises in Kryptonian, adding the formal gesture for a peaceful meeting when the older Kara seems unmoved.

_ “Ieiu, _ she looks just like you from your old pictures,” the girl whispers, breaking the growing tension between the two Karas.

“Hush, Hannah,” Older-Kara says quietly, and the girl falls silent, watching curiously. “Why are you on my Earth?” The question is pointed but no longer openly hostile, and Kara relaxes, just the slightest bit.

“I have a device that allows me to jump worlds, I use it sometimes to explore the possibilities,” Kara admits, flushing when the older woman gives her a look that speaks volumes about how stupid she thinks the practice is. It’s at very least a pointless risk, and Kara knows that.

“I see I’m foolish and headstrong in every version of myself,” Older-Kara says, earning a sheepish look in response. “I’m half tempted to take you to meet my wife, she’s the one who managed to smack the idiocy from my head years ago. But she’s in meetings all day, and I’ve been strictly warned not to interrupt unless the world is ending again. You have no intention of destroying my Earth, do you?”

“No, not at all!” Kara rushes to reassure her. “I usually just wander around for a while, see what’s different and what’s the same.”

“I’d imagine there’s a good bit of difference in this world,” Older-Kara says with a wry smile. “The fact that you still look twenty-five proves that much.”   
“Oh, I am twenty-five,” Kara says, looking down self-consciously. “My pod got stuck in the Phantom Zone, I arrived later than I was meant to,” she explains when the older her sends a questioning look her way.

“That’s horrible,” Hannah breaks in, and this time her mother doesn’t hush her. “Stuck all that time, you must have missed out on meeting Mother.”

“I guess so,” Kara says, not wanting to explain the differences and subtleties of the multiverse to them in the middle of another serious conversation. “But it’s okay, I had a great family take me in when I arrived.”

“Still, missing out on Cat’s particular brand of care is a shame,” Older-Kara says, and suddenly Kara can’t breathe.

“You married Cat Grant?” she manages to gasp out in disbelief, immediately trying to figure out how that could have happened. Her first reaction is one of disbelief, but then Kara starts to remember the little flashes of what had always seemed to be mutual attraction, the ones that had never been acted on for too many reasons to list.

“Yes, we met in college,” Older-Kara says with a puzzled frown. “Why is this so surprising to you?”

“Um, she was my boss,” Kara says, still processing the information.

“That would make it complicated,” Hannah says with a smirk, and Kara finds herself liking her. She can see Cat’s influence in her sense of humor and confidence. And now that she knows that Hannah is Cat’s daughter, she can see the resemblance there as well.

Older-Kara seems to follow the glance and unspoken question, and before Kara can even consider asking is answering. “Cat and I performed a full binding marriage ceremony when we married. It allowed us to have children, and split the blessings of Sol and Rao between us.”

“What does that mean, split the blessings?” Kara asks, not having heard of that particular effect of a binding. Then again, she’d never heard of a Kryptonian and human binding before either.

“I age faster, she ages slower, for one,” Older-Kara explains, gesturing at herself in way of explanation. “From what we’ve managed to test so far, we’re aging at roughly the same rate, much faster than Kryptonians on Earth and much slower than humans. That’s the most noticeable difference, though my abilities are slightly weaker than they were before the binding, and her senses are slightly better. The binding seems to have balanced us, somewhat.”

Kara absorbs the news silently, letting her mind think through all of the implications of that. She’d been so afraid of ending up alone as the world aged around her, but maybe it doesn’t have to be that way. Maybe she can live an almost normal life. And even if that life isn’t with Cat, though the part of her that’s finally admitting to the attraction hopes there’s a chance for that, at least the possibility is there to share with someone.

“I think you broke her,  _ Ieiu,” _ Hannah laughs, and after a moment Older-Kara joins in. It’s not teasing, more understanding, and Kara manages a smile as her brain finally manages to catch up completely.

“I um, I think I’ll have to save the full visit for another time,” she says as she pulls out the reality portal. “I think I have some pressing conversations in my future.”

“Visit us any time,” Older-Kara says with a knowing look. “And if you get the girl, bring her with you. Seeing two Cats in one room would undoubtedly be an event to remember.”

Kara laughs and agrees as she calibrates the device to take her home, suddenly desperate to see if the possibilities she’s imagining could become reality. Or, well, could become  _ her  _ reality.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm off work for the week before starting a new job, don't get too used to me posting this much!


End file.
